BleepingComputer.com: Linux help

Dan, that won't work, from that link:

Quote

EDIT: cross-posted with myrti.

This post has been edited by elise025: 23 January 2012 - 03:26 PM

Does the lappy have a floppy drive it can boot from? If so, you can try installing GRUB on the floppy, boot it, and manually boot the CD from the GRUB command line.

You can do small upgrades till you reach 11.10 via the following:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes the end of life upgrades at the bottom.

Yes, that's the page I linked earlier, however it clearly states that jaunty ->karmic is only possible through alternate CD and we don't have the CD drive.

regards myrti

Well scratch that idea.

This post has been edited by cryptodan: 23 January 2012 - 04:03 PM

@ myrti

Sony Vaio PCG-R505GL But the manual is deceiving as it shows a CD rom which does not exist on my model.

@ Blade

I extracted the HDD and tried to connect it to a Dell lappy and another old desktop but was unable to find a suitable adapter.

@ Andrew

Has a slot for a PC Card not a floppy though

Again thanks for the help everyone

H Dave,

how sure are you that USB boot is impossible? Could it be that USB is simply disabled in BIOS? (It's often the default) Have you had a look around?


This could work: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/NetbootInstallFromInternet

This may also work but is less ideal:
http://lubi.sourceforge.net/lubi.html

It's like wubi as that it let's you install ubuntu from within the OS you're running. Only drawback is there's no way (I can tell you now, maybe research will show one) of getting rid of the host system, namely your jaunty install as lubi will be running as an application within jaunty.
regards myrti

This post has been edited by myrti: 23 January 2012 - 05:36 PM

myrti, on 23 January 2012 - 05:16 PM, said:

I'm doing a dry run of this on my VM at the moment, this looks exactly like what you would like. You download two files and put them on your computer, then boot wit those and connect to the internet to download all relevant data from there.
The only thing I would say is needed for this to work is a lan-connection to be able to go online without too much trouble. If at any time (before reformatting) you get second thoughts you can abort and just boot normally into jaunty again. (eg if no intenret connection can be established)

Everything is downloaded from the web and you are prompted at various intervals about your choices (among them what user interface you want to use). This would seem to be a good way to go.

regards myrti

This post has been edited by myrti: 23 January 2012 - 07:20 PM

I have some questions about the Netboot install. From the download page I chose 11.10 > i386. Which of the downloads in the parent folder do I need?

After I reboot into Grub how can I determine which partition root (hd0,?) these files reside?

Thanks

This post has been edited by thcbytes: 01 February 2012 - 12:20 PM

Hi,

I went with ubuntu installer and the files that lay in the i386 folder in it. However I did not finish the install because it was getting late. I will try again later today.

regarding the partition, just identify the partition you're putting the folders on and pluck that in.

So you can type mount into your command line now and see what partitions you have currently mounted. (likely there will be only one mounted to /. It should look something like this: /dev/sda2 on / type ext3 (rw).)
Identify the partition (I would recommend going with /boot as suggested, but you can put them anywhere you want) and reboot into grub. There once on the command line you can do an ls to list all partitions seen by grub, so for example (hd0,1)(hd0,2).. or (hd0,msdos1)(hd0,msdos2)... The syntax may differ, but the numbers will remain the same. sda2 is always 0 for the hard drive, 2 for the partition, no matter what syntax. So it might be root (hd0,2) or for grub2 root (hd0,msdos2).

You're changing the boot parameterse manually for this instance of the boot only. Nothing gets changed, if you reboot the grub will be unchanged and boot into jaunty as before.

regards myrti

An update..

I tried numerous methods to no avail..

• Slave the hardrive. No universal adapter
  
• Netboot install. Flagged with numerous errors
  
• Create a new partition and install to it. No way to create the partition while booted into that disc
  
• No CD drive
  
• No bios USB support
  
• Lubi installed but failed
  
• Boot from grub failed as the USB was not recognized there

But I don't give up easily!!!

I found this...

http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html

I placed the plop installer into the grub menu. I transferred the plop installer by USB to the old booted version of ubuntu. Extract it to the /boot folder then altered to menu.lst file to give me the option to launch plop. I rebooted and chose the plop option and installed it. I rebooted again and plop now gives me the option to boot the hard disc, CD or USB!!

My brain hurts but this old computer now can boot any live linux. I am posting from CrunchBang now. I had puppy up just a few minutes ago.

Thanks for the help and suggestions.

Sincerely

This post has been edited by thcbytes: 01 February 2012 - 12:20 PM
Reason for edit: Topic moved to Linux forum ~ Elise

You, sir, are awarded 50 geek points!

Excellent. Add that to the thousands my children have previously rewarded me and I am on my way to something "special" I would suspect. ....or am I confusing those with nerd or dork points??